Purser — On Inflammation and Suppuration. 157 
so many experimenters, that I think it may now be considered to rank 
as a thoroughly well established fact in physiology. As to the truth, 
however, of the second proposition believed to be proved by Cohnheim, 
opinions are not at all so unanimous. Whilst some writers, as, for 
instance, Billroth, accept in their entirety the views of Cohnheim, and 
refuse to admit the proliferation of connective tissue cells, many other 
equally competent observers dispute the truth of these views; and 
while they admit that the white blood cells pass through the vascular 
walls, and form a part of the pus produced in inflammation, they still 
hold to the opinion supported by the great names of Virchow and 
Goodsir, that the greater part of the pus corpuscles is due to a multi- 
plication of the cells of the inflamed part itself, and that the role 
played by the blood and vessels in inflammation is chiefly limited to 
the furnishing of increased pabulum to provide for the rapid growth and 
multiplication of the cells pre-existing in the diseased part. 
Of the writings which have appeared in support of these latter 
views, the most noteworthy is a series of essaysf by Professor Strieker 
and his pupils, in which are recorded the results of observations and 
experiments on the process of inflammation in the several tissues of 
both cold and warm-blooded animals, and in which it is stated that 
nearly every cell in the body, even those so highly specialised as the 
ganglionic cells of the brain, and the masses of protoplasm surrounding 
the muscular nuclei, can, under the influence of irritation and increased 
supply of nutritive material, multiply and give rise by repeated 
division to the moveable and indifl'erent (i. e. unspecialised) corpuscles 
of pus. 
The observations of Cohnheim were made chiefly on the corneae of 
frogs and rabbits, in which inflammation had been excited either by 
cauterising the centre of the membrane itself with nitrate of silver, or 
by putting a seton through the eye-ball behind the attachment of the 
cornea to the sclerotic. In the first case the cornea became primarily 
inflamed, in the second it sufl'ered secondarily in the course of the 
panophthalmitis excited by the operation. As the result of either 
kind of treatment the cornea loses, after a time, its transparency, and 
becomes grey, and more or less opaque. If it be then submitted to 
microscopic examination, it is seen to be crowded with pus corpuscles 
which possess the highly refracting granular protoplasm, the multiple 
nuclei and the powers of spontaneous change of shape and position 
enjoyed by pus corpuscles in other parts. It is affirmed by Cohnheim, 
that besides these pus corpuscles the ordinary branched connective 
tissue cells of the normal cornea are also present, presenting no altera- 
tion from their natural condition, whether in their shape or arrange- 
ment, or in the character of their protoplasm and nuclei. If, indeed, 
the inflammation be very far advanced, so that the tissue of the cornea 
* Henle and Meissner. Beiicht, &c., 1869, s. 17. See also Billroth. Die allge- 
meine Chirurgische Pathologie und Therapie. Vierte Auflage, s. 66 et seq. 
t Studien aus dem Institute flir experimentelle Pathologie in Wien. Wien. 1870. 
